The present invention relates to a fuel indicator or a fuel measuring device for measuring and for indicating the residual amount of the fuel in a fuel tank of a vehicle.
As a general device for measuring the amount of fuel in a fuel tank of a vehicle, a construction conbining a float and a skiding resistance element is known. In principle, this known device comprises a float floating on the liquid surface of the fuel in a tank. The position of the float representing the amount of the fuel is detected by slidable movement of a sliding element coupled with the float and arranged slidably on a surface of a sliding resistance element to convert the position of the float into an electric amount i.e. an electric resistance. The resistance value is thus measured electrically to derive the amount of fuel in the tank.
In this kind of conventional device, the process to measure the resistance value representing the fuel amount is mechanical as mentioned above. Thus, a variation or change in the contact resistance between the sliding element and the sliding resistance element becomes very large with age. Moreover, such a device has a rather high rate of faults such as imperfect electric contact. In addition, mounting the device in the fuel tank is troublesome.